Apparently an international footy game (some little affair between Man U and Barcelona) last week meant that her overnight trip to woo the annual vice-chancellors bash saw her roughing it in a university hall of residence.

Visions of the good Baroness donning her nightie under the basilisk stare of an undergraduate pin-up (Jarvis Cocker? Radiohead? The Spice Girls?), however, were swiftly dispelled by a lackey. “It was university accommodation, but it was actually in the Chancellor’s Conference Centre. Not really halls,” he explains. Thank goodness.